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Monday, November 21, 2016

`How to Sting, Gall, and Vex One Another'

I am not by nature superstitious but for many
years I have privately indulged in a variation of the ancient divination
practice known as sortes Vergilianae
(“Vergilian lots”). A reader seeking his fortune or advice opens the Aeneid at
random, points at a passage and beholds his revealed guidance. More than a mere
poem or rousing good story, the epic has always been valued as a source of
wisdom and inspiration by Romans and Christians alike. I’ve known people who
substituted the Bible for the Aeneid. I’ve never actually used Vergil for
purposes of bibliomancy. Over the years
I’ve substituted Shakespeare, Montaigne, William James’ Principles of Psychology, Tristram
Shandy and the Oxford English
Dictionary. But the wisest and most entertaining book I know is Robert
Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy,
which I have frequently used for purposes of sortes Burtonianae. I own three copies and today I’m using the
first volume of the three-volume Everyman’s Library edition. My finger landed
on this passage on Page 276 in Part 1, Section 2, Member III, Subsection 10,
specifically on the words “panders, bawds, cozening”:

“And which is worse, as if discontents and
miseries would not come fast enough upon us: homo homini daemon, we maul, persecute, and study how to sting,
gall, and vex one another with mutual hatred, abuses, injuries; preying upon
and devouring as so many, ravenous
birds; and as jugglers, panders, bawds, cozening one another; or raging as wolves,
tigers, and devils, we take a delight to torment one another; men are evil,
wicked, malicious, treacherous, and naught, not loving one another, or loving
themselves, not hospitable, charitable, nor sociable as they ought to be, but
counterfeit, dissemblers, ambidexters, all for their own ends, hard-hearted,
merciless, pitiless, and to benefit themselves, they care not what mischief
they procure to others.”

No news there. As I said, Burton is the wisest
and most entertaining of writers.

[An enterprising practitioner of traditional sortes Virgilianae has set up a
digital edition here.]